"The carpenter, being an honest fellow, did with much importunity prevail for one half hour's time to consider the matter; and returning to work upon the vessel, with a spy by them set upon him, he feigned himself taken with a fit of the collick, for the relief whereof he suddenly ran into the captain in the great cabin for a dram. Where, when he came, his business was only in brief to tell the captain of the horrible distress which he has fallen into; but the captain bid him as briefly return to the rogues in the woods and sign their articles, and leave him to provide for the rest.
"The carpenter was no sooner gone than Captain Phips, calling together the few friends that were left him aboard, whereof the gunner was one, demanded of them whether they would stand by him in this extremity, whereto they replied they would stand by him if he could save them, and he answered, 'By the help of God, he did not fear it.' All their provisions had been carried ashore to a tent made for that purpose, about which they had placed several great guns, to defend it in case of any assault from Spaniards. Wherefore Captain Phips immediately ordered those guns to be silently drawn and turned; and so pulling up the bridge, he charged his great guns aboard and brought them to bear on every side of the tent.
"By this time the army of rebels came out of the woods; but as they drew near to the tent of provisions they saw such a change of circumstances that they cried out, We are betrayed! And they were soon confirmed in it when they heard the captain with a stern fury call to them, Stand off, ye wretches, at your peril. He quickly cast them into more than ordinary confusion when they saw him ready to fire his great guns upon them.
"And when he had signified unto them his resolve to abandon them unto all the desolation which they had proposed for him, he caused the bridge to be again laid, and his men began to take the provisions on board. When the wretches beheld what was coming upon them, they fell to very humble entreaties; and at last fell down upon their knees protesting that they never had anything against him, except only his unwillingness to go away with the King's ship upon the South Sea design. But upon all other accounts they would choose rather to live and die with him than with any man in the world. However, when they saw how much he was dissatisfied at it, they would insist upon it no more, and humbly begged his pardon. And when he judged that he had kept them on their knees long enough, he having first secured their arms, received them aboard, but he immediately weighed anchor and arriving at Jamaica, turned them off."
This is a very proper incident to have happened in a hunt for hidden treasure, and Cotton Mather tells it well. One forgives Phips for damning the eyes of the Boston magistrates, and likely enough they deserved it, when it is recalled that the witchcraft trials were held only a few years later. Having rid himself of the mutineers, Captain Phips shipped other scoundrels in their stead, there being small choice at Jamaica where every other man had been pirating or was planning to go again. His first quest for treasure had been a failure, but he was not the man to quit, and so he filled away for Hispaniola, now Hayti and San Domingo, where every bay and reef had a treasure story of its own.
The small island of Tortuga off that coast had long been the headquarters of the most successful pirates and buccaneers of those seas, and Frederick A. Ober, who knows the West Indies as well as any living man, declares not only that Cuba, the Isle of Pines, Jamaica, and Hispaniola are girdled with Spanish wrecks containing "as yet unrecovered millions and millions in gold and silver," but also that "during the successive occupancies of Tortuga by the various pirate bands great treasure was hidden in the forest, and in the caves with which the island abounds. Now and again the present cultivators of Tortuga find coins of ancient dates, fragments of gold chains, and pieces of quaint jewelry cast up by the waves or revealed by the shifting sands.
"It was not without reason that the only harbor of the buccaneers was called Treasure Cove, nor for nothing that they dug the deep caves deeper, hollowing out lateral tunnels and blasting holes beneath the frowning cliffs. The island now belongs to Hayti, the inhabitants of which have not the requisite sagacity to conduct an intelligent search for the long-buried treasures; and as they resent the intrusion of foreigners, it is probable that the buccaneers' spoils will remain an unknown quantity for many years to come."
Captain William Phips lay at anchor off one of the rude settlements of Hispaniola for some time, and his rough-and-ready address won him friends, among them "a very old Spaniard" who had seen many a galleon pillaged by the pirates. From this informant Phips "fished up a little advice about the true spot where lay the wreck which he had hitherto been seeking ... that it was upon a reef of shoals a few leagues to the northward of Port de la Plata upon Hispaniola, a port so called, it seemed, from the landing of some of a shipwrecked company, with a boat full of plate saved out of their sunken Frigot."